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Sunday, May. 03, 2009

Swift care saved young farmer

MACKVILLE — As Justin Hatchett stood in the doorway preparing to leave for a day's work on the family farm on June 18, his mother asked what he was planning to do for the day.

He told her he would be hauling hay.

"Well, good," Jeannie Hatchett replied. "I don't worry about you as much."

Looking back less than 11 months since a tractor rolled over on Justin Hatchett, the conversation is tinged with irony.

Hatchett had graduated from Washington County High School just weeks earlier and expected to spend the summer working on the family's 950-acre farm before starting college in the fall.

As soon as college was finished, he planned to return home to follow in his father's footsteps, earning a living off the land.

Instead, he has spent the past 11 months recovering from a farming injury that medical professionals say could have killed him, especially if emergency workers hadn't gotten him to the right hospital as quickly as possible.

They say Hatchett's story is a good example of how a statewide system for handling severe trauma cases could improve patients' outcomes and save lives.

On that June day, he grabbed a Gatorade and two honey buns at the local store, and headed to work.

Hatchett pulled a hay wagon behind his tractor; family friends on two other tractors used hay forks to load it up.

"There was still dew on the grass that morning," he recalled.

With eight round bales on the wagon, Hatchett started down a hillside to unload.

"Every time I'd tap the brakes, it'd just slide," he said.

Before he knew it, the tractor was in a skid.

"I stood up 'cause I was ready to jump off."

But the hay trailer jackknifed.

"If I jumped off to the left, then the wagon would run over me," he said. "If I jumped off to the right, the tractor would. I just had to ride it out."

The tractor tipped, and then the 12,000-pound machine fell on him.

"I blinked and I hit the ground. Just as soon as I opened my eyes, it was right there."

Pinned and praying

He remembers the next 30 minutes.

The tractor lay with its four wheels straight up in the air. Its rear left fender pressed across Hatchett's abdomen, below his rib cage.

"The tractor was still running," he said.

His legs were wrapped around the seat.

While one of the men working with him raced to call for help at Hatchett's grandmother's house, the other worker, Justin Reynolds, turned off the tractor and reached into Hatchett's pants pocket to pull out a pocketknife. He cut into the other side of the pants and retrieved Hatchett's cell phone.

"I flipped it open," Hatchett said. "It wouldn't come on. The screen was busted."

The men prayed together, asking God to send help. But as the moments wore on, Hatchett said, "I couldn't hardly breathe, 'cause it was mashing me. I said, 'You've got to get it off of me.'"

Reynolds backed his tractor up to Hatchett, then stopped. "I can't do it! I can't do it!" Hatchett recalls him saying.

Hatchett persuaded him to use the hay fork to try to lift the tractor. It didn't work, but it did take some of the weight off.

"I could feel the relief," Hatchett said.

Back on the family's other property, his father, Marty Hatchett, was plowing tobacco when he got the call on his cell phone, telling him what had happened.

"I took off to the house," he recalled.

Jeannie Hatchett, who had been cleaning out the garage when she got a similar call, met him in the driveway.

The situation was all too familiar to the couple. Marty Hatchett's father had died two years and 11 months earlier when a tractor ran over him, killing him instantly.

'I thought he was already gone'

The Hatchetts passed the Mackville rescue squad on their way to the other farm, leading them to where their son lay.

About 20 minutes had passed, and it was getting harder for him to breathe.

"I prayed that he would just take me then," Hatchett said. "I was numb."

And then he heard the roar of his daddy's truck.

"I remember hearing Momma say, 'Is he still breathing?'" Hatchett said.